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Author(s): P. A. Michelis
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Sep., 1952), pp. 21-45
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/426617 .
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22
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attention paid to the art of the Eastern Church, which it sought to minimize
by characterizing it as a by-product of the Roman decline, or at best, a compound of foreign influences. Thus, the main factor of Byzantine art-its Greek
spirit-was ignored.
Hence my contention that no proper aesthetics of Byzantine art had come
into being, and that what appreciation Byzantine art had gained up to that
time had been only indirect. Of course the Greek element in it was recognized
(indeed prematurely so by some archaeologists such as Millet); but since this
inheritance was sought in the letter and not in the spirit, its detection, far
from shedding light on the art under study, rather tended to obscure it. So it
is that Morey, one of the later art historians, transposed Strygowski's question
from "Rome or the Orient?" to "Atticism or Alexandrianism?", as Demus
aptly remarks.2
It is evident then that what we need in the case of Byzantine art is an aesthetics uninfluenced by historical prejudices, and of which the raw material, so
to speak, shall be the Byzantine works themselves; an aesthetics that shall
judge those works directly, by aesthetic criteria. It will be well to ask at this
stage whether Western mediaeval art, if thus approached, might not through
the aesthetics it provided act as a guide to an appreciation of its Eastern counterpart; might not be treated as a starting-point for a comparative aesthetics. To
associate the two arts is justifiable enough, since-despite the fact that one
sprang up in the East and the other in the West-both are expressions of the
same ideal-the Christian religion. Christianity changed man's aesthetic outlook,
irrespective of race or country. Let us then see first what were the aesthetic
demands of Christianity, and afterwards how the Greek, the Roman, or the
Frenchman conceived and expressed them.
It was chiefly the German philosophers of idealism who formulated the
primary aims of Christian aesthetics. Schelling has said characteristically that if
classical art aimed at the inclusion of the infinite in the finite, Christian art
sought to achieve the reverse; that is, "to make the finite an allegory of the
infinite. "3
But these philosophers too, and the Romantics generally, owe their attitude
to Kant, according to whom the core of all philosophic and aesthetic outlook is
subjective. It was this Copernican revolution in philosophy, which impelled the
Romantics later to place ineffable, transcendental experiences in the infinite
depths of the soul, and which caused them to seek in art the reflection of divine
perfection. However, Kant is also a pioneer in the field of aesthetics; for here,
influenced by the Englishman Burke,4 he places beside the Beautiful another
value-that of the Sublime-which alone can explain the profound aesthetic
emotion aroused by the sense of the infinite, the immeasurable, the transcendental; for, according to Kant, the Sublime does not exist in nature.
Hegel was thus able to establish later that Christian art comes under the
2 Otto
24
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nucleus of this art period. As the Christian dogma was filtered through Greek
philosophy, so the idea of the Sublime was filtered through Greek sensitiveness
when it marked Byzantine art-an art of which Greeks were the main creators.
Through an aesthetic approach to the philosophy of art history, I have elsewhere
attempted to analyze Byzantine art.8
If further proof were needed of the purely sublime inspiration of early Christian
and Byzantine art, we have it in the turn already evident in the latest period of
antiquity, from the philosophy of the Beautiful to that of the Sublime. Of course,
aesthetics did not at that age constitute a separate and specialized science.
But we find as early as Plato's day a nascent consciousness of the soul's upward
striving. Love is the demon that moves the soul to reach out for the divine, and
in the "Phaedrus" Plato describes the soul's divine ascent as a direct illustration
of the ineffable and the transcendental.
The Neo-Platonists later speak clearly of the soul's fall from, and return to,
the One. "Our country whence we came and whither the father resides,"9 says
Plotinus in the manner of an apostle of Christ. In his tractates on the Beautiful
and Intelligible Beauty, he speaks of the Good as lying in "the beyond," and as
being "the source and the origin of the Beautiful" ;10 of the soul's intuition as
"preceding seeking and reasoning" ;1" of vision as inner, mystic, "inwardgazing" ;12 and he affirms that, "never would the eye behold the sun if it did not
become sun-like, nor would the soul behold beauty, if it did not become beautiful.
Let everyone who would behold God and Beauty first become God-like and
beautiful."'3 Rightly, then, Zimmermann characterizes him as an "ancient
romantic" who sought beauty in the divine and the transcendental, of which
worldly beauty is but a reflection.
The idea of the Sublime is more clearly discernible in Poseidonius and Philo
the Alexandrian.14 Longinus, probably at about the same time as Plotinus,
writing "On the Sublime," defines it as "an echo of the lofty mind." As an example of the sublime style, he quotes the words of Genesis, as Hegel did so
much later: "And God said, 'let there be light' and there was light."
The influence of Neo-Platonism on Christian philosophy, which need not
here be stressed, and the transcendental Christian dogma could have inspired
no other aesthetic category than the Sublime, in the religious-minded early
Christian age and the age of Byzantium. That the manifestations of this aesthetic category underwent mutations, went through phases of grandeur and
decline, is only natural. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the later students
of Byzantine art, who realized the need of examining it "from within," should
have had recourse to the Neo-Platonic precepts and their application in Byzantine philosophy and religion, on which to build up their aesthetics of Byzantine
art.
8 Michelis, P. A., An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art (Athens 1946).
9 Plotinus, Ennead I, 6, 8, 21.
I, 6, 8, 41.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., V, 8, 6, 2.
12
Ibid., , 8, 9, 1.
13Ibid., I, 6, 9, 30.
14Kuhn, Jos H., "T4&os,Eine Untersuchung zur Entwicklungsgeschichte
gedankens von Platon bis Poseidonios (Stuttgart, 1941) pp. 72-111.
des aufschwung-
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27
Grabar, p. 16.
Johannes Theodoracopoulos, Plotins Metaphysic des Seins (Buhl Baden, 1928), p. viii.
18 Rob. Zimmermann, in his Geschichte der Aesthetik (Wien, 1858), p. 127, writes that only
the image made by the statue-maker can give an idea of the work of the creator. He too
must have copied the archetype, for there is no question of a creator who first fashioned both
archetype and its copy. Aristotle clearly asserts that form and matter are both equally
eternal and uncreated.
17
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and the intelligible; afterwards it engenders the Ideas which are both archetypes
and forces; then Nature; and finally, Matter where there is division and
plurality. All is linked by harmony and sympathy. We have, then, clearly
outlined a descent from the spiritual to the material, yet along with it a continuous tendency of the material to return to the spiritual. Matter indeed
becomes the vessel of this return, for no spirit is wholly immaterial, just as
from matter some vestige of spiritual perfection is never absent. Spirit and matter
permeate each other. Thus Plato's dualism is bridged, and the Platonic world of
Ideas begins to flow. The Idea in its descent begins to participate in multiplicity; that is why in Nature perceptible beauty is an exception. Art, however,
purifies the Idea, of which the perfection lies in completeness and in unity. The
appearance of the Idea in Matter constitutes the beauty of the work of art-a
concept which reminds one of Hegel. The downward flow of the Idea is then
checked on its appearance in perceptible beauty; and art, in so far as it achieves
this, rescues man from the fall and becomes a religion in that it alone can render
the spiritual visible to man's bodily eyes. Man, however, has also inner vision
which can reveal to him the spirit in a perfection no longer visible, but in which
his intellect may apprehend clarity, goodness, truth, and beauty. If then, perception is the lowest rung in the ladder of gnosis, with intellectual activity above
it, and apperception above that again, we have in ecstasy the topmost rungfor ecstasy comes of intoxicating participation in the One.
Plotinus has therefore rightly been called an "ancient romantic." He too, like
the later romantics, considered beauty to be an image of the divine, since he
affirms it to spring from the higher source-the One. The soul of the seer is
lured by the beauty of the object of vision, because the soul unknowingly sees
itself in it; as the child is fascinated by its own reflection, which it does not
recognize, in the mirror. But, as Theodoracopoulos rightly observes,'9 Plotinus,
in contrast to the romantics of the West, considers that the infinite, too, should
be accepted as a form, even though without relation to the finite. He maintains
that the soul cannot grasp the idea of formlessness and is "possessed by form
from beginning to end." Theodoracopoulos thus recalls Philebus, who affirmed
that the Universe is constituted by forms, and he adds: "The reasonable nature
and the beauty of the world is not a projection of subjective cognition, in the
sense of subjective idealism, but an a priori structure of the universe, prior to
all seeking and all reasoning."20He continues: "Where beginning and end call
for one another, there we have the whole simultaneously presented; this, in
fact, is not the principle of mystic search but the law of Greek art."'"
If Plotinus, then, is the herald of the Middle Ages, he is also the last of the
Greeks. This strange admixture in him of mystical search and of a dominating
sense of beauty gives us the peculiarly Plotinean aesthetics. Of course, his is an
aesthetics founded on the mystic elevation of the soul, but on confronting the
spiritual it is beauty which charms him; and it is through beauty that he attains
the spiritual realm. He pursues mystical ends by intellectual means; and because
19
Theodoracopoulos,
Ibid., p. 118.
21 Ibid., p. 121.
20
p. 112-121.
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he is led there mainly by his aesthetic faculties, the artistic element in him can
hardly be separated from the mystical.
No philosophy has given such prominence, as has that of Plotinus, to the
aesthetic factor. And however much his aesthetics may unconsciously aspire to
the sublime, it is still impregnated with the sense of beauty. The art he seeks
yearns for the sublime, but is not yet sublime. And a romantic art, like that of
the age of Plotinus, could not be so (unlike early Christian, and particularly
Byzantine art which has a transcendental character). Before art could turn
to the sublime completely, it had to adopt another attitude-indifference to, if
not renunciation of, Beauty-an attitude which Christianity, influenced by
Eastern models, brought to art and which it introduced also in its philosophy
from the moment it ceased to hide under the pagan garb.
Of course, the philosophy of Plotinus was later used as a pedestal for the
Christian dogma. But there are fundamental differences between them, of which
the main ones are:
(a) Plotinus' One is impersonal; the Christian's God is a Person.
(b) The One generates by illumination; God creates because He wills it and
out of infinite love for his creatures. Nature to the Christians is irrational.
(c) The highest rung of cognition, to Plotinus, is ecstasy. The experience,
however, is a personal conquest and must again and again be renewed in order
to participate in the One. For the Christian there is revelation which, if by a
divine act of grace it be vouchsafed to him once, is enough for his permanent
enlightenment as long as he himself also endeavors.
(d) In Plotinus, art, which makes the Idea perceptible, is a means of preventing
man's fall. Conversely, in Christianity, art is not a means of salvation, although
it helps man to elevate himself by representing symbolically the Passion and the
Saints, who intercede on our behalf when we worship them in their icons.
(e) The idol of the pagan has value in itself; the icon of the Christian has
not, except through the spectator. In Christian art, the active participation of
the individual in the aesthetic act is attained as was sought by Plotinus. But
the artistic act is not sufficient in itself.
(f) In Plotinus every manifestation of the spiritual in art is redolent of
beauty. In Christian art, however, the need of presenting transcendental symbols
and beatific conditions makes it sublime and intensely expressivistic, to the
point of being indifferent to beauty (although in Byzantine art, even in its
extremest manifestations, the Greeks preserved the element of beauty). But
let us now come to examples.
(2) The mediaeval anti-classic forms, more than any others (says Grabar)
correspond to the theory of Plotinus.22 His ideas exercized no influence on his
immediate environment, but found response in the early Christian age.23Grabar
brings forward as evidence the classicist revival led by the Neo-Platonists; an
artificial imitation of the past, which prevailed in Rome of the fourth century,
as the low-relief diptych of the "Symmachs and Nicomachs" shows.
Surely, however, this turn to the past is no proof that Plotinus' views were
22
Grabar, p. 16.
23
Ibid., p. 30.
30
P. A. MICHELIS
ignored by his age; but, on the contrary, the natural outcome of his viewsthe outcome of a mystical quest which yet, dominated by the idea of the beauty
of form, thus strives between two irreconcilable trends. I think with Rodenwaldt24
that the art-forms of his own age are those most in keeping with Plotinus'
ideas, because in them we find a strange combination of mysticism and Greek
morphology-an art romantic in spirit, but eloquent of beauty in form, as in
the diptych above mentioned. It is as characteristic of Neo-Platonism to be
mystic-searching yet pagan in its faith, as it is of its art to be romantic in spirit
but classicist in form. That is precisely why it did not exclude a recession to
form-dominated classicism, as it did not exclude the turn of Christian art to
the transcendental, when its inward-dwelling tendency gained supremacy.
This turn inward is foreshadowed in examples of Christian art in which the
spiritual expression is undoubtedly intense, but in which-while the external
symbol is still pagan (as, for instance, in the Orpheus of the Athens Byzantine
Museum)-the expression is necessarily subordinated to beauty of form. However, any work in which the influence of the East is immediately obvious, and in
which the symbols are purely Christian (as in the well-known sarcophagus of
Ravenna with the Magi), at once comes near expressivism of the kind we find
later in Byzantine art. The movements become intense, the bodies almost
levitate, the background is anti-naturalistic and infinite in its monotony, while
the whole takes on a transcendental character.
I would say the same of the Tetrarchs of San Marco, in which Grabar sees
archaism and a retreat of the concept of space, perhaps because he brings to the
work a naturalistic conception of the attitude of the bodies and the presentation
of space. In the sculpture of classical art, of course, the attitude of the statues
refers to bodies which are in harmony with the mind. In the Tetrarchs, however, merely the "fertile" moment that refers to a spiritual condition, which
the bodies by their unnatural position help to express, is presented. (Let us
observe, incidentally, that these bodies show movement and that movement in
itself indirectly suggests space.) Finally, Grabar's observation on the sarcophagus
of the philosopher (probably Plotinus) in the Lateran Museum, that the philosopher's feet are presented in perspective because of the fact that the low
relief unfolds along what is almost a single plane, proves nothing so well as the
important fact that sculpture is beginning to give way to painting, which, with
its two-dimensional surfaces, is in its nature the more suitable medium for
expressing spiritual conditions and transcendental visions and for depicting
dematerialized bodies. Grabar's efforts to derive from Plotinus the inception of
a new perspective suitable to express the transcendental; his efforts to explain
through this the composition of early Christian paintings are exceedingly farfetched. For in Plotinus there is no inkling of any such idea.
(3) It is not Plotinus' attitude toward the art of his age which concerns us,
says Grabar, but his manner of looking at a work of art and the philosophical
and religious value he attributes to vision.25 To Plotinus, the work of art (Grabar
24
G. Rodenwaldt, "Zur Kunstgeschichte der Jahre 220-270," Jahrbuch d. Deutsch. Arch.
Inst., LI, 1936, p. 82; and The Cambridge Ancient History, XII (1939), Ch. XVI, p. 544 and
563.
25 Grabar, p. 16.
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says) is not only the mirror which reflects the original as an image, but also a
work which receives the influence of the universal soul. It partakes of it, namely,
according to the law of universal sympathy.28 Consequently, Grabar concludes,
naturalistic imitation is, according to Plotinus, artistically inferior; and before
the artist can learn how to treat representations of another kind, he must
learn about the nature of vision.27
In a tractate of the Second Ennead entitled "How Remote Objects Appear
Small," Plotinus asks why distant-lying objects dwindle and those near appear
in their true size. And he explains that this happens, because size dwindles to
the degree to which colors fade. Then, no longer able to distinguish their parts,
we can no longer estimate the size of the whole by comparison with them; so
too, with a hill looked at from a distance. From this Grabar concludes that
Plotinus, in seeking to discover the true size of things, wants them on the first
plane, on a single plane, and consequently debars geometrical perspective and
aerial perspective, and puts in the place of the tints of distant objects local
colors.28Plotinus, however, mentions neither perspective, nor single plane, nor
space, nor local colors. Grabar's conclusions reflect only his own determination
to explain a posteriori through Plotinus an art with whose technique he is himself
familiar. But we could by this same method explain through Plotinus other
arts too, with similar anti-naturalistic techniques-explain perhaps even contemporary art, which discards perspective, several planes, and chiaroscuro, and
yet is not neo-Platonic. Moreover, assuming we can thus explain mediaeval
painting, how are we on the same principles-without space, given one plane
and the help of local colors only-to explain mediaeval architecture?
Grabar supports his argument on the grounds that Plotinus, in all he says
about vision, seeks the true size of objects. But Plotinus does not make their
size depend only on distance. This is evident from his assertion that, even
when an object is near, a fugitive glance which does not catch the details will
not allow us to assess the total by the parts. Plotinus thus wants us to guard
against the deceptive impressions of sight, in a philosophy which lays much store
by subjective elevation, and is bent, in consequence, on protecting the mind
from illusions of sight and from superficial impressions of participation in the
object.
Not only in the case of architecture but also in that of painting, the singleplane principle is utopian, as is the refutation of space and mass. No matter
whether a painting's representations are two-dimensional; no matter the degree
to which in anti-naturalistic painting the accentuation of depth with perspective
devices is avoided; space is always indirectly suggested by the gestures of the
figures and the difference in colors and in scale, which has the effect of making
some of the figures appear nearer and some more remote. The impression is
created of several planes and of life in the picture. The depth here, if it is not
presented as natural, is suggested as ideal.
The difference in the size of the figures in a composition of early Christian
26
Ibid., p. 17.
p. 18.
27 Ibid.,
28Grabar, p. 19.
32
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31
32
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 21.
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the foreground. In fact, however, the four apostles in the foreground are all on
one plane, as the feet of their seats testify. The table is also on this same plane.
The rest of the disciples are drawn about a semi-circular bow, perpendicular to
the line of the floor; there is, consequently, no perspective system here. Grabar
notes these imperfections,35but imputes them to the copyist's lack of skill, his
inability to show space and perspective flight. "The whole composition," he
says, "has been projected on a single plane, as the curtain which falls behind
the head of the Apostle proves."
To my mind, the impression derived is not of a single, but of numerous planes
-at least one for each pair of Apostles opposite one another. And in art, it is
the impression that counts and not the scientific accuracy of the composition.
In this work, for instance, the four Apostles in the first row, do not seem to
the spectator to be on the same plane, because they are caught up in the whole
composition, which suggests a circle to our imagination. If, however, Christ,
who is in the background, had been drawn smaller than all the disciples, according
to orthodox perspective, He would not have been the most prominent figure in
the composition. He has been made larger in proportion to His eminence and
all the rest are therefore subordinated to His person. The natural sizes of the
back- and fore-ground figures cease to seem reversed and appear true to the
artistic imagination; and, as in logic two negatives make an affirmative, to deny
here the reduction of Christ's proportions is to postulate His eminence. On the
same principle, the Almighty in the Byzantine churches is larger than any of
the other icons, although He is placed higher. Conversely, Da Vinci, in The
Last Supper, in order not to lessen the eminence of Christ in perspective, made
the length of the table face the spectator and was thus forced to present all
the apostles on one side of it. Other artists, who painted the Last Supper with
perspective accuracy, in placing Christ, the most eminent figure, in the background where He appears the smallest of all, have often been forced, in order to
enhance it, to exceed His scale or to place over His head clouds and angels and
employ other often ridiculous-devices.
Reversed perspective can not well be explained as due to the fact that the
painter transfers himself to the object he draws, acting on Plotinus' principle
that he should participate in it. Were he to do so, his bodily eyes would see
nothing; as for what he would see with his inner eye, that is not to be reproduced
by "reversed" perspective merely. Moreover, Plotinus tells us that before we
can become conscious of the ideal intellectual vision, which at the moment of
impact practically deprives us of our faculty of seeing, we must successively
detach ourselves from the object of vision, and again submerge ourselves in it.
Besides, Plotinus himself insists in his tractate on Vision, that two things should
be distinguished-the seer and the seen.
As an example of ray-like perspective, Grabar brings forward a miniature in
which the choirs are drawn ray-wise, although incidentally; the composition
shows also examples of other conflicting kinds of perspective.36
Grabar, p. 33.
A miniature of Cosmas the Indicoplectus in the Vatican. A copy of the ninth century
from the original of the sixth century in Alexandria.
35
36
34
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(6) The physics of Plotinus is, as Br6hier has rightly characterized it,
"spiritual" (spiritualiste) and not "mechanical" (m6caniste). In his physics then,
the parts are not the elements of the whole, but its products. Therefore the idea
of the whole is more real than the idea of its parts.40Hence Plotinus affirms that
the world becomes lucid to the spirit. The eye, flashing its inner light, meets
the outer; the one becomes transparent to, and interpenetrates with, the other.
That is why Grabar, commenting on the Doura fresco,4' finds that faces and
objects in it merge into one another, touch the ground without standing on it
lose their weight and mass, so that an insubstantial, transparent world is thus
created.42
The merging of bodies into one another implies disintegration of form; but
Plotinus categorically asserts form throughout. Besides, however much the
bodies may be dematerialized, they live in space and have plastic depth-both
impressions suggested indirectly by the difference in tones and scale and the
movement of the forms. The spirituality of the world here presented, then, is
achieved by such spiritual means as expression and symbolism, and not by the
subtraction of matter. As Plotinus himself says in his tractate on Intellectual
Beauty, "All is transparent, nothing dark. Every being is clear to, and within,
every other; for light comes to light and, there, the sun is both all stars and each
star; and each and all the stars are the sun. There too, each ever comes of all,
and is at the same time each and all." Such sublime concepts however, are not
to be brought down to the sphere of the material, nor is the view warranted
that they can be reproduced with the aid of external means only.
As Plotinus put the whole above the particular, so in anti-classical art the
parts lost the self-sufficiency and completeness they had enjoyed in classical
art, in which each part separately represents the whole. In the former art, the
composition follows the monarchical law of submission, instead of the democratic
marshalling of parts, to be observed in classical art. The parts are subordinated
to the whole often represented by a dominant element, instead of being, as in
classical art, co-ordinated with one another. The law of unity in variety is
preserved in both cases, but classical abstract beauty gives way to characteristic
beauty in anti-classical art.
(7) Finally, to Plotinus, total knowledge of a subject does not proceed from
a succession of propositions about it. Knowledge must possess the whole subject
and be identical with it. Art is an instance of this, since its knowledge includes
the very prototype it imitates. The wisdom of the gods is not propounded in
propositions but exposed in beautiful images. It is expressed integrally as, in the
Egyptian script a single symbol expresses a whole idea, in contrast to the Greek
or Latin which puts several letters together to compose a word.
Art provides with its pictures direct consummate knowledge, thanks to the
intellectual vision. This kind of knowledge is not reasoning, but a sort of contact,
or of ineffable intellectual touch-an action antecedent to the birth of reasoning.
Grabar concludes that, as a result of this theory, art rejected imitation which
40
41
42
Grabar, p. 22.
A fresco of Palmyrian deities in Doura of the second century A.D.
36
P. A. MICHELIS
pp. 24-25.
The quality of a work consists neither of happy color nor of symmetry, for then beauty
would be composite and its parts in themselves would not be beautiful. In the work of art,
the Idea unifies the composition; and when this is apparent we are charmed by beauty.
Plotinus therefore is interested, not in how the work is presented, but in what appears there.
And indeed, only this attitude to art can explain how the harmony of abstract classical
beauty came to be replaced by characteristic beauty, so that highly emphasized contrasts
and even the repulsive note of the ugly were later tolerated when it came to expressing
exalted experiences. But these later developments had not even occurred to Plotinus, nor
did he, in discarding "euchroia" and "symmetry" propose anything to take their place.
46 Theodoracopoulos (pp. 95, 96, 98) adds that Kant's definition of critical taste is practically identical with Plotinus' definition of artistic understanding. Both attribute the
capacity they define to a special spiritual faculty. They are again on common ground in
making the enchantment of the soul ("Entzilcktwerden der Seele"), a criterion of beautywith this difference only, that Kant does not associate this enchantment with the Good
and the True, as Plotinus does.
44
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of the ancient philosophers, who did not condescend to deal in such matters.
Therefore, despite the importance which Plotinus attributes to beauty, indeed
precisely because of it, we should not view his aesthetics as the science it is
today-a science treating of art in the main. Plotinus was interested in beauty
chiefly as a vehicle to the spiritual domain.
Of course a change in the artistic technique of an age is invariably the result
of a shifting in the view of the scheme of things, the unconscious adaptation of
art to the prevailing world theory. And in our own age, it is in our world-theory
we should look for the explanation of our art, which, in abandoning perspective,
in disclosing many angles of vision, and in employing local color effects, has
surpassed impressionism and now seeks the structure of the world's patterns,
attempting to analyze their essence.
III. Theory of Magical Realism in Byzantine Art
If Grabar has put a materialistic construction on Plotinus' metaphysics,
Demus has done the same for the theological tenets derived from it. The result
is that he too has misunderstood Byzantine aesthetics. Let us examine some of
his theories in this connection.
To begin with, Demus explains how, during the iconomachy Theodore of
Studium and John of Damascus founded the theory of the icon in relation to
Christian dogma. The image, according to the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation
(bKrop/r) is a product of illumination ('KeaJ4/L?); the icon, therefore, partakes of
the sanctity of its prototype. If it differs from it "according to its essence"
(KaTr'obcatv) it is identical with it "according to its meaning" (KaO'&roraotav).
The relation between the prototype and its image is analogous to that between
God the Father and Christ His Son. The icon is as authentic in its representation of the Divine as is the reproduction of the Passion during Sacred Liturgy.
(1) From the above Demus concludes that the painter "exercises a function
similar to that of the priest."46 But, in asserting this, Demus misleadingly
overshadows the painter's purely artistic ends by the religious character of his
work. In painting his sacred subject, the painter is as far from "exercising the
functions of a priest," as is the priest from exercising those of an actor in officiating. Of course, the painter approaches his sacred subject with faith and
reverence: he fasts and prays before devoting himself to its representation, then
sinks into the obscurity of the anonymous artist. But though he feels his mission
to be sacred, his ends and means are primarily artistic. If he fails as an artist,
he has failed as a symbolist too. His symbols must have artistic merit, and are
intended to appeal, not only to the devout Christian, but also to the profane
and the non-believer. The priest's symbols, on the other hand, without intrinsic
artistic value, are meaningless to any but the believer to whom the priest exclusively addresses himself.
(2) Demus then goes on to say that the icon partakes of its prototype's
sanctity; and veneration is due to it only because through it, this worship passes
on to the prototype.47 But were the icon a purely priestly symbol, without art
to propel imagination to a spiritual sphere, pious worship might have sunk to
46
47
Demus, p. 6.
Ibid., p. 6.
38
P. A. MICHELIS
abject idolatry. The icon, in other words, helps to uplift the mind of the worshipper only so long as it remains an artistic medium primarily. And that is
what Byzantine art achieved. (Of course, had the icon been beautiful, there
would have been the danger of the spectator falling in love with an idol; Byzantine art however, was not concerned with reproducing physical beauty, but with
conveying the sublime experience.)
(3) Now, Demus suddenly introduces an anti-religious and foreign element,
which he calls "Oriental"48-namely, the element of magic. Now by magic we
understand those arts which pretend to minister to man by the assistance of
spirits and forces of nature. Magic is undoubtedly associated with Neo-Platonismn
and the East. It may even be said to have played a part in the lowest scale of
the religious beliefs of the faithful, but what part it played was unofficial, and
certainly not sanctioned by the Church; for the results would be catastrophic
to religion, as they would be to art too if art did not go over magic.
When Demus, then, describes the relation of the worshipper to the icon as a
"magic relation," we may not unjustifiably infer the implication that the icon
becomes to the worshipper a vehicle for attaining base ends by the propitiation
of such demons or other supernatural powers. When, furthermore, he characterizes the icon's identity with its prototype according to its meaning as a
"magical identity"49 although he stresses that,-in contrast to the idol, which
has value in itself-this identity "exists only for and through the beholder," he
little realizes that in that way lies pure iconolatry. Finally, he speaks of "magical
realism"50 in Byzantine painting, achieved by the communion of spectator
and icon, in the real space of the church. And he takes this as the guiding principle
in both the composition and disposition of the icons.
The pursuit of so materialistic an end, however, would certainly have spelt
inartistic results; and this is far from being the case in the Byzantine church.
Let us, then, analyze the inferences Demus draws from his premise and see
whether it is not in fact untenable.
(4) "The image," he writes, "must possess 'similarity' with its prototype";
a frontal attitude is therefore needed to make this similarity visible and comprehensible and to establish the relation with the beholder. The profile view is
reserved only for "figures which represent evil forces ... like Judas." But
because in large compositions, where the figures must converse with one another,
this device would be awkward, the Byzantine artist resorts to the three-quarter
profile. The representations thus become unnatural and rigid, and in order to
avert the impression that the gestures meet at a point outside the picture plane,
the ingenious solution is discovered, of placing them in niches on curved surfaces
and in domes, so that they face one another as they communicate through the
physical space where their movements meet.
There is no depth behind the picture plane. Fictitious space52was superfluous
B
Ibid.t P- 43.
49 Ibid.,
p. 6.
Ibid., p.43.
51IBid., pp. 6-7.
50
S2
Ibid.,
p. 9.
NEO-PLATONIC
PHILOSOPHY
AND
BYZANTINE
ART
39
in the Byzantine painting, since it "enclosed the real space" in front of it, where
the spectator stood, "not so much a beholder as a participant."53 To Demus,
the gold background does not stand for infinite depth, but "is left empty.""
Now surely if the spectator's impression is that the figures move only in the
real space in front of the icon, this would have the effect of making the church
seem like a cage, in which the figures are imprisoned. In point of fact, neither
Byzantine painting nor mosaic (with its monochrome background utterly bereft
of a landscape) is devoid of fictitious space. Both must inevitably place their
representations somewhere in space, and if they do not reproduce this space
naturalistically (i.e., directly), they suggest it indirectly. In Byzantine painting
and mosaic, the figures themselves do so through their gestures, their difference
in scale, their gradation of tones, and variety of colors. Even their monochrome
gold background with its scintillation gives the impression of ethereal, celestial
space and diffused light, in which heavenly beings hover. And in thus transporting the imagination, Byzantine mosaic and painting, far from encaging the
figures in the church, seem in fact to push back its very walls in an ideal plan.
Again Demus, in letting the Byzantine picture partake of the space in which
the spectator moves,55 does away with aesthetic distance, which even sculpture
-placing its statues in physical space as it must do-creates between spectator
and statue; so that in imagination, the spectator is transferred to that ideal
space in which alone this ideal form could live. Painting, if anything, makes
this distance more pronounced, since of course it achieves it more easily, thanks
to its two-dimensional surface which makes of the representations almost insubstantial wraiths, immaterial reflections of reality. If the aesthetic distance does
not exclude the impression that the figures move in front of the picture plane,
this still does not make them move in the real space, but in a space again ideal,
which is the illusion of a heightened imagination-not the result of the figures'
emplacement in a niche. An instance in point is a mosaic of the Annunciation in
Daphni, in which the "movement not only links the figures into a unit, but also
creates space in the picture. The concave surface of the squinch itself contributes
to this effect, since it apparently diminishes the distance between the two
figures, allowing us for a moment to imagine that the Angel is actually flying
through the niche's space."56Art in other words-as, bringing the divine down
to earth, it elevates man to the divine-creates an ideal sphere in which the two
make contact helped by imagination.
(5) Pilgrimages to the Holy Land and crusades, Demus maintains, found
little response in Byzantium, because the devout had in the iconographic scheme
of his church, the three zones representing (a) heaven; (b) the life of Christ
(and so "the magical counterpart of the Holy Land"), and (c) the earth with
the Choir of Saints.57
The Byzantine worshipper had therefore, according to Demus, little need of
53 Ibid., p. 4.
14
65
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 4.
56
57
Demus,
p. 15.
40
P. A. MICHELIS
pilgrimages and was content with contemplating the icons, because, on the
one hand, these were not regarded as "pictures" but as "magic realities"58and
because on the other-and in contrast to the West-time is not construed
historically but symbolically from the Byzantine iconographic disposition in the
church.
Such a symbolical view of time in Byzantine iconography would of course
entail a similar view of space; and this would seem to contradict Demus' earlier
statement that the icons move in the real space of the church. If the worshipper's
imagination surpasses the boundaries of time in his church, it must in the same
way surpass those of space. However this may be, the above is a one-sided view
in Demus, who is inclined to overlook the fact that the icon, a purely religious
work though it is, is at least as much a work of art as it is a religious symbol.
And the difference between a purely religious symbol and a purely religious work
of art need scarcely be emphasized.
The reason in Byzantium for the lack of response to, and in the West the
passion for, crusades is to be sought, I suggest, in their different conception of
religion. The passion for crusades in the West was also due partly to political
reasons. Byzantium, according to Greek tradition, strove for the Christian creed
as an idea remote from practical considerations. It analyzed the theological
problems and with its objective outlook risked destruction in raising the icon
controversy. Whereas the West, following the Roman tradition, was concerned
with religion chiefly in so far as it affected the individual and his life.59Br6hier60
writes that the West put the emphasis on subjectivism, on man's individual
relations with God, and on the importance of practical acts; and that we find
this point of view marking the movement that sprang from Augustine to this
day.
In this mentality lies the explanation not only of the crusades but also of the
West's preference for sculpture to painting, as also of the didactic and tortured
scenes, the monsters of the speculum universale, and the chronological sequence
in narrative in the mediaeval Western cathedral.
(6) Demus explains that the West, because of its historical narrative tendency,
preferred the basilica, where there is a beginning and an end, "with its definite
direction parallel with the unrolling of the story." Byzantium preferred the
dome centralized building, "which has no strongly emphasized direction" where
the glance therefore wanders round and round, and the icons can be disposed in
hierarchical order from above downwards, in three zones-Heaven, the Holy
Land, the Earth.61 So the church becomes a symbol of the world, "an ideal
"62
iconostasion.
Ibid., p. 30.
62
63
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 12.
NEO-PLATONIC
PHILOSOPHY
AND
BYZANTINE
ART
41
thought." Its columns appear like "hanging roots." Conversely, Western architecture proclaims the principle of organic growth, and the Greek temple the
idea of perfect equilibrium of forces.
Now, the columns of Byzantine architecture, although lacking ribs and
entasis, yet do not seem to me to resemble hanging roots. What in fact happens
is (as I have elsewhere stressed)64that in Byzantine architecture, carried members are aesthetically superior to the supporting ones; yet we are spared any
sense of discomfort in witnessing this because the supports carry only arches
and groin-vaults, which by their curves lure the eye ever onwards and thus
make of the columns not, as it were, permanent pedestals for burdens, but only
momentary resting-places, whence it is shifted elsewhere. In other words, we
lose the impression of burden and support, as well as of pressure and bending,
as we become aware mainly of cohesion and rigidity in mass. Moreover, in an
architecture by nature monolithic, we tolerate thrusts and pierced surfaces.
Finally, projections and plastic decoration have been abolished to let plain
surfaces and lines of edges that demarcate their limits dominate, so that the
masses seem to have shed their weight and to be dematerialized.
Nor is Gothic, in contrast to Byzantine, architecture organic with the meaning
Demus attributes to this word, thereby suggesting that Byzantine architecture
is unorganic. The high supports of Gothic cathedrals rise abruptly, branching
out into piers, that seem almost to carry the clouds. That is to say, here, in
contrast to the Byzantine church, the burdens are aesthetically inferior to the
supports, whose balance is aesthetically justified only by the ribbed formation
of the carrying skeleton, and technically possible only by its exterior buttresses.
Here again, the difference is not to be sought in "hanging" or "organic"
architecture, so much as in an unworldly and a materialistic spirit respectively,
which pervaded each architecture-in two varying conceptions of religion which,
in the Byzantine church, found shape in restrained loftiness and harmonious
proportions; in the Gothic, in an unrestrained fervor that displayed technical
and material achievement. With the light flooding its dome, a symbol of the
sky, the Byzantine church draws the spectator's thoughts upward to God. It
achieves greater spirituality than the Gothic, in that, far from annihilating the
spectator with its bulk, it helps him to elevate his mind. The Gothic church
with its exaggerated height is in its very proportions expressivistic and overwhelms the spectator. Placing its representations in a succession of ascending
strips, it little heeds whether the eye can see them at that exaggerated height.
In the Byzantine church, on the contrary, the higher its pictures are placed,
the bigger they are painted.
The Byzantine artist, in placing his more prominent figures higher and therefore proportionately enlarging them, reverses the scale of optical diminution
and surpasses it, in order to preserve the essential scale of values, appropriate
to his figures. Thus, the Almighty is drawn on the scale of God. This indeed is
in keeping with the Greek tradition, which placed in the ancient temple an
over-size statue of the god.
Of course, this optical reversal in Byzantine iconography presupposes the
64
42
P. A. MICHELIS
NEO-PLATONIC
PHILOSOPHY
AND
BYZANTINE
ART
43
from a distinct source, but used real light in the icons."68 It would have been
more to the point to have said that an anti-naturalistic art has little need to
confine itself to a single source of light in the picture, and therefore has resort
to several (as does, in fact, art in our own day). This, however, does not mean
that it has resort to the real light outside the picture. Demus seeks the cooperation of real light in the Byzantine picture as he seeks that of real space.
Demus goes on to say that sometimes, when there was not enough natural
light, "a special kind of modelling was executed which recalls the inverted
tonality of photographic negatives." The method gained currency in Paleologian painting, he tells us.69Surely, then, the very fact that Paleologian painting adopted the method wholesale, irrespective of the adequacy of lighting,
vitiates the theory that it was employed only where real light was wanting.
It would seem to prove rather that the method of inverted tonality was from
the first a pictorial device and not a way of combining artificial with real light.
But in Hosios Loukas, too, which Demus mentions as providing an especially
interesting example of his theory, works with negative shadows do not appear
only in isolated points where light is poor, but also in several groups of pictures
placed at points where there is ample light. There is little need to attempt to
justify inverted tonality by an alleged inadequacy of natural light; the introduction of this artifice is merely a note of impressionistic illusionism in an art
which, contrary to the general idea, was full of ingenuity and had an aversion
to uniformity and to system.
Moreover, we have seen in the example earlier quoted of so-called "reversed
perspective," that such inversions in art often establish a thesis, as in logic the
negation of a negation. In refusing to imitate the physical, the painter may be
said to reject that which denies the spiritual; and a transcendental art is justified in thus refusing imitation, if it is capable of creating another world in place
of the physical-a self-sufficient, consistent, and harmonious world which fills
all the aesthetic demands of the spectator.
(9) In modelling the Byzantine mosaic, two techniques are simultaneously
employed, the technique of grading and that of sharp contrast.70 Some have
attributed these different techniques in the same work to an earlier and a later
period, some to different influences on the contemporary artist. Demus cuts
the Gordian knot by attributing it to technical reasons. The size of the mosaic,
he maintains, determines whether or not gradation of colors is permissible.
For if the artist adopts the technique of gradations, he must bear in mind the
limited range of shades of each color, and remember that he cannot afford to
exhaust prematurely the whole range of shades at his disposal along the outlines of the forms.
Technical reasons certainly to a large extent decided the choice of technique,
but I feel that the final decision rested with the artist; his initiative was not so
much conditioned by, as given free play in, various factors-the height at which
68
69
70
Demus, p. 35.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 37.
44
P. A. MICHELIS
he should place his work, the light which would fall on it, the material he disposed of, the figures he had to paint, and chiefly the style he intended to give
his work. Byzantine art provided a wide field of activity for individual conceptions-hence its mutations and infinite variety even in one and the same
work.
(10) Paleologian art, Demus asserts, in the absence of niches in which to
place its icons, painted them in the picture; in order to suggest the real space
contained in such niches, it introduced architectonic features and curved thrones.
It also "suggested space in front of and below the picture plane;" a technique
strongly reminiscent of the monumental paintings of the classical Byzantine
era, when the beholder communicated with the icon through physical space.
In describing the Paleologian painting as "reminiscent" of that relation between picture and beholder, Demus implies that the relation has now weakened; and he goes on to say that the "process" (of suggesting space in front
of the picture) "goes so far that hands, feet and garments actually overlap the
bottom of the frame"; figures seem to be "precipitated out of the picture into
bottomless depth."'71
In the first place, in classical Byzantine architecture, it was not the niche
only, but the whole church which enclosed space. Second, in view of the fact
that most of the icons were placed outside the niches, and that the niche was
in any case peculiar only to the octagonal type of church, its absence from the
Paleologian architecture could not have been so much felt that it had to be
imitated in painting. Admitting the niche, like the curved throne, in the picture
to be the most characteristic architectonic form of a cavity enclosing space,
I would then reverse Demus' sentence and say, not that the Paleologian painting missed the niches in the church, but that it borrowed them to enhance its
own fictitious depth.
The overlapping of the frame is to be seen also in classical relief work. It is
an impressive way of eliminating the frame's limits and of stressing the continuity of space in front of, with the fictitious space behind the picture. But
here again, the space in front of the picture is suggested as ideal, owing to the
aesthetic distance art creates between the work and the spectator. Once that
distance is lost, the work ceases to be a work of art; incapable of transporting
our imagination, it appears to us as an absurd and inadequate imitation of
reality.
In the Byzantine paintings in question, there is no suggestion, as I see it,
of "figures being precipitated beyond the frame into bottomless space," but a
suggestion of expanding fictitious space, which unfolds both in front of and
behind the picture; so that the figure, in moving towards the spectator, increases the depth behind it. The device was useful to a technique lacking perspective.
The scrolls, the thrones, the landscapes, and the dramatic gestures of Paleologian painting, are, obviously, expressions of a Baroque-like turn in Byzantine
art towards its decline; a phase which succeeds the acme of every great art.
In that phase, balance is abolished; passionate expression predominates, forms
71
Ibid., p. 81.
NEO-PLATONIC
PHILOSOPHY
AND
BYZANTINE
ART
45
IV. Conclusions
(a) Plotinian philosophy is inevitably misinterpreted when applied to explain early Christian art instead of the art of its own age, as would have been
more natural. Christian art, no matter the degree to which it may have derived
from Neo-Platonic aesthetics, is inspired, not by the Neo-Platonists' pagan
mysticism which springs from the impersonal One, but by the divine revelation
of the One and Only God. It is an art of the Sublime and not of the Beautiful.
(b) Aesthetic values are inevitably misunderstood, when theological tenets
are brought as criteria to explain artistic questions. The historical and religious
analysis of an art's symbols (unless these are artistically self-sufficient) does
not attribute artistic value to them. Christian art has not provided purely
religious symbols, intelligible only to the initiate, but forms capable of moving
any spectator, not by the degree of sanctity accorded to them but by their
purely aesthetic appeal. Such forms can be best judged, then, in the sphere
of aesthetics.
(c) The aesthetic category of the Sublime corresponds to the spirit of Christian
art. The way in which the Greeks perceived and expressed it characterizes the
art of Byzantium.
The Romantics, who revealed anew the feeling of the Sublime, were able to
appreciate and revive mediaeval Christian art; whereas the Renaissance, whose
Ideal was the Beautiful, condemned it.